Dreaming of an Acquisition? Here’s How to Prepare

You’ve made it as an entrepreneur. Your startup has positive cash flow, proven growth, and a strong management team. What’s next? No problem, you say. Just sell the company for big bucks. Easier said than done. Here are the things you need to think about before considering acquisition.

Decide what you want. Yes, what you want. Do you want to remain in charge of the business? If so, you need to tailor your discussions and the selection of venture partners to focus on the benefits of you remaining in charge. Show why it’s a better business with you at the helm.

Or do you want to maximize the cash you can take out of the business so you can move on to your next idea? If this is your objective your strategy will need to focus on how a transition (you leaving the business) can add value to the acquirer.

I’ll add a third choice, in between stay in charge and maximize the cash. I imagine you’ve figured it out. Control and cash; there’s a trade-off between the two. There’s a spectrum; a series of choices.

Create leverage. Once you’ve decided where you fall in the spectrum, figure out who has the leverage. Obviously you have leverage because you own the business. But think about the acquirer’s leverage. They are where the cash is coming from. Never forget this principle: no matter how good of a guy or gal you are or what a nice guy or gal the acquirer is, you are in a tug of war where leverage is the key.

Leverage is elusive. It moves around; it shifts; it’s a state of mind. You don’t have to sell your business. The same can be said for the acquirer—they don’t have to buy it. If you’re a difficult seller, the buyer might walk away, shifting their attention to another opportunity. If the buyer pushes you too far, you can just say no.

How do you create leverage? The more you have the better positioned you are for a negotiation. Leverage begins with the quality of your startup. It starts with the strength of your market and how unique your product/market fit is. Is IP important? If it is, do you have a protected IP position? Do you have strong management and advisory teams? Do you have access to capital or are you close to running out of cash?

Layer in equity partners. Many entrepreneurs don’t want equity partners. I think that’s a big mistake. Grants and awards are the utopia usually followed by convertible debt. That’s a great place to start. But what you really want is committed equity. Equity partners can help make you successful.

Think of building layers of equity partners. Your first layer could be an extension of family and friends but a better move would be to add equity from the entrepreneurial network, investors who bring connections. The next layer should be from the professional investment network, investors who see a lot of different start up companies. Their investment provides validation of what you have accomplished with your startup.

This is a good place to remind you of the hard truth of being an entrepreneur: if you can’t attract equity investors you’re not ready for primetime. There’s a parallel to a long-standing principle that the most difficult sale is the first one, without the first sale you don’t have a business. If you can’t attract equity, you don’t have a scalable business. The good news is you don’t have to have a scalable business to have a good life-style business and a good life-style business may be just fine for you.

Approach acquisition like a business process. I see a lot of startup presentations with a slide on their exit strategy noting potential acquirers like Google and Facebook. I don’t pay much attention to this. Not only is the exit a long way off, but the odds of having a Silicon Valley company pay millions for your startup are probably the same as winning the lottery.

Identifying the best acquirer for your startup takes time and focus. This is one of the issues you need to address up front. If your startup requires your full attention, you will not be able to lead a good “sale” process. If this is the case, you need to have strong leadership on your advisory team linked up to your management team to organize your sale process. This is also where those equity partners can be a real plus for you.

If you’re going to be successful in creating an exit strategy, you need to work at it, just like any another business process to manage. Oh, how we hate to talk about business processes, but if you’re going to be successful you need to. You concentrated on specific and focused pieces of your startup to make it the success that it is today. Now you need to spend that same energy organizing your approach to acquisition.

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Manufacturers ask and AI technology answers

The following article on Bennit AI was featured in Impact magazine and written by Beth W. Orenstein

Henry Ford, one of the world’s greatest manufacturers, had a right-hand man named Harry Bennett, known for helping Ford “get things done.” Based on his abilities, three manufacturing industry professionals have developed a way for every manufacturer to have a trusted assistant like Bennett, this one virtual and digital.

The app they created, called Bennit, not only serves as a production assistant but can also be tailored to users’ products, services and roles in their companies.

“Because Harry Bennett was found to be more of a brawler than a consensus builder, our team changed the spelling of the product (and company) name and took the opportunity to add ‘IT’ to it—thus Bennit,” says Michael Yost, one of the three founders and chief marketing officer.

The company, Bennit Inc., went from the idea stage in the middle of 2016 to engaging early adopters last year. Thanks to seed money, including a $25,000 grant from Innovation Fund Northeast Ohio, a number of companies—including a tire manufacturer in Northeast Ohio—are learning about what Bennit can do for them. Later this year, Bennit plans to launch an Early Adopter Program targeted at shift supervisors, who will be able to access the app via individual subscription.

The idea for the company emerged from the evolution of manufacturing worldwide. “There’s a renewed, sustained focus globally to enhance manufacturing through the use of advanced information technologies,” Yost says. Germany has Industrie4.0, China has Made in China 2025 and the U.S. talks of “smart manufacturing” – enabling all information about the manufacturing process to be available to help make smart decisions when and where it is needed across entire manufacturing supply chains and product lifecycles.

Yet most manufacturers are small to medium-sized companies, and they are left out of these initiatives, Yost says.

“Big data analytics (the process of examining large and varied data sets) on a global fleet of wind turbines to ensure uptime isn’t going to help a 20-person company that builds pallets in northern Ohio,” he says.

And even though manufacturers of all sizes have been installing devices to measure production and automating their equipment for decades, they still have gaps, Yost says. Industry insiders refer to the data not captured in IT systems as “dark data.”

“Most of what happens in a plant every day isn’t captured in an IT system,” Yost says. “So the manufacturers are right that they can’t analyze most of what happens.”

Enter Bennit

Bennit lives on data. It is constantly consuming them, interpreting them and learning from them.

“It connects manufacturing personnel to peers and information they need when they need it,” Yost says. “That information may come from existing systems such as the machines, or from their human resources department, or from Internet of Things (IoT) platforms. It even can come directly from fellow team members.”

The Bennit entrepreneurs have found a way to capture this information and use artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to analyze individual and group sentiment and learn which factors play into a manufacturer’s success.

“As the system learns, it will ultimately have answers to problems for workers before they even know what questions to ask,” Yost says.

Yost sees Bennit working much like the iPhone’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or Amazon Echo’s Alexa. He offers these examples of how small to mid-sized manufacturers might use Bennit as a personal assistant.

Troubleshooting. There’s a breakdown on a production line. Ask Bennit: “What are the most likely causes of this type of breakdown?” If it’s a component such as winders, ask, “Who is our company expert on winders?” Or, “Please show me the troubleshooting guide for this component.”

Real-time collaboration. “Hey, Bennit, who ran into this same fault last? Please connect me to them.” Or, “Bennit, which operator runs this machine the best? Please tell the operator I would like to talk to him about what he is doing different.”

Production optimization. “What are the top three reasons for our downtime in March?” Or, “Please recommend the best window to do planned maintenance on Press 7 before third shift.”

General and personal assistance. “What is the last run of the day?” Or, “Who called in sick today on second shift?”

Bennit also can track workers’ activities to learn the best safety procedures on the manufacturing floor and what they might need to improve to prevent accidents.

When reviewing Bennit’s grant application, Dennis Cocco, director of the Innovation Fund, says he was impressed by both the immediate benefits manufacturing companies can experience with Bennit’s technology, and the potential it holds as AI evolves and manufacturers better understand its capabilities.

“AI is rapidly changing itself, and the world we live in,” Cocco says. “In the next 10 to 15 years it will have a profound impact on manufacturers in Northeast Ohio and I’m excited to see companies like Bennit harnessing its power now and showing companies how it can change their business for the better, while keeping the future wide open.”

Yost agrees. He often hears people talk about ‘smart manufacturing’ as a journey and believes there’s truth in that. “But that implies a long road ahead and we don’t think the road’s that long,” Yost says. “We encourage manufacturers to keep the end in mind, jump in now, and see where things go.”

How NanoBio Systems is using Desich SMART Commercialization Center equipment and the help of LCCC interns to commercialize its technology

To measure glucose levels, those with diabetes must suffer the frequent – and painful – finger pricks required of most home monitors.

But NanoBio Systems is trying to change that. This small diagnostics company with a big goal of revolutionizing glucose monitoring for diabetics is partnering with Lorain County Community College to commercialize its innovative technology. The goal is to bring to market saliva glucose sensors to replace the current method of testing glucose levels.

“Saliva closely mimics everything in blood but is just more dilute,” says Michael A. Bruckman, Ph.D., director of research and engineering at NanoBio Systems. “It’s a huge market with huge interest. There’s a lot of potential and growth for companies like ours.”

Facilitating growth

NanoBio Systems is using LCCC’s Richard Desich SMART Commercialization Center space and equipment to perform its data-collection processes, and two LCCC student interns are performing vital tasks in the company’s push toward U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.

“It’s worked out well,” Bruckman said of the relationship with LCCC. “And we’re pretty excited about the pathway forward.”

NanoBio Systems got its start in 2011 in Boston, when CEO Seyamak Keyghobad sponsored research at a Northeastern University lab to perform early development of the technology. As the technology progressed, Keyghobad looked for a more commercialized setting to house research and development of the glucose sensors.

As a graduate of Case Western Reserve University, Keyghobad had Cleveland connections, and he found his way to Matt Apanius, director of SMART Microsystems, a company that creates solutions for microelectronic package assembly challenges and is housed in the Deisch SMART Commercaization Center.

“The community college offered a lot of good resources and amenities for what they were charging, compared to anything offered in Boston,” Bruckman says.

Bruckman, who joined NanoBio Systems around the time it moved to LCCC in 2015, says the lab and office space has been ideal. But so, too, has the proximity of Great Lakes Innovation & Development Enterprise, (GLIDE), located on the LCCC campus, where Entrepreneurs-in-Residence provide business assistance to companies at every stage of development.

“I use the mentorship services offered through GLIDE to troubleshoot our business plan and talk about the direction we’re heading, so having GLIDE right downstairs has been really helpful,” Bruckman says.

NanoBio Systems also has benefitted from the work of two LCCC students – Kraig Holler and Elizabeth Muska. Holler is a Student in the Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS) program who has assisted with the sensor manufacturing and lab testing, while Muska is a nursing student who will be the point person for collecting saliva samples.

For a company with just three employees – Bruckman, a full-time junior scientist, and a part-time senior scientist – the work the student interns do is invaluable.

“They seem to be really appreciating and enjoying the experience,” Bruckman said. “We’re still a very small company, so they’re getting high-level updates whenever we see them.”

The process of collecting enough accurate data to obtain FDA approval is long and arduous, and NanoBio Systems is still several years away from marketing its devices.

The goal is to one day use SMART Microsystems to complete small-scale manufacturing of the sensors and, if the product is as successful as hoped, proving the process can be scaled. If and when that happens, the company could be sold to a firm with larger manufacturing capabilities.

Going forward

Already, NanoBio Systems benefits from the space, advice and labor pool provided by its landlord. Eventually, if and when the company graduates to the sales side of the spectrum, there is potential for the partnership to expand.

“We could potentially use some of the advertisement and sales services offered through the Desich Business and Entrepreneurship Center,” Bruckman says.

That’s the long-term outlook. For now, the company operates humbly and hopefully, confident that its research into the capabilities of saliva testing can expand its reach beyond the realm of diabetes.

“Noninvasive glucose testing is a very big market, but I’m really excited about the potential for areas outside of that,” Bruckman says. “There is a wide variety of other biomedical markers that can monitor your general health. Our technology seems flexible enough that we can enter into different markets relatively smoothly with the application of enough physical force and energy.”

It’s possible that saliva could one day be used to detect such diseases as the Zika virus, the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or something as common as the influenza virus.

That’s what makes the work being done by NanoBio Systems so fascinating and the LCCC partnership so fruitful. This is a small company with big goals that, through the resources available at LCCC, is getting a big boost.

This article, written by Anthony Castrovince, originally appeared in Impact magazine.

Work with SMART Microsystems yields big wins for Nordson – and the region

Nordson Corp.’s Lorain County roots run deep.

The global industrial company, based in Westlake, was founded in Amherst by Eric and Evan Nord, sons of local industrialist Walter G. Nord. While the Nord family no longer runs the company, the manufacturer retains close ties to the community, and nowhere is that more evident than in its relationship with SMART Microsystems, located in the Richard Desich SMART Commercialization Center for Microsystems on Lorain County Community College’s Elyria campus.

Roots of the partnership

The relationship between Nordson and SMART began in 2010 when the center bought state-of-the-art equipment from Nordson’s Advanced Technology Systems group, giving it a competitive advantage with capabilities in automated dispensing, plasma treatment and X-ray inspection.

“We do microelectronic packaging, and Nordson manufactures a wide variety of equipment that supports that,” says Matt Apanius, president and managing director of SMART Microsystems. “When we first got SMART off the ground, we purchased four initial pieces of equipment from them.”

From that initial interaction, Nordson and SMART developed an ongoing dialogue, discussing the capabilities of both organizations and how they could develop synergies that would drive both the company and the college forward.

“They had a couple of conferences on site, and we attended,” says Dave Selestak, business development manager for Nordson MARCH, part of the Advanced Technology Systems group. “That, in particular, allowed us to see the additional capabilities SMART had gained as far as microelectronic diagnostic capabilities and the like.”

The fact that Nordson, SMART and LCCC are all located in the same region also provided shared motivation for partnering.

“SMART and LCCC are organizations committed to helping individuals and businesses in the region,” says Apanius. “You want to help the people in your own backyard, because when they’re successful, it benefits everyone who lives here.”

Uncovering new opportunities

Over the last six years, Nordson and SMART have worked together on a number of projects. SMART’s ongoing acquisition of advanced equipment and new capabilities has made it an increasingly valuable resource to Nordson.

“For about a year and a half, Nordson needed sophisticated camera capabilities for looking at microelectronic devices,” Selestak says. “We worked on some designs of experiments (DOEs) that we wanted to turn into a white paper to distribute to conferences and trade shows.”

Nordson worked with SMART and LCCC Business Growth Services to fund a DOE, a systematic approach to finding the relationship between factors affecting a process and the output of that process. That support helped pay for an LCCC student intern to develop a white paper evaluating how plasma might benefit the manufacture of microelectronics, especially circuit boards.

The white paper – which showed that plasma helps clean circuit boards without inflicting any damage – was presented to a global audience at the 2015 Surface Mount Technology Association International conference in Chicago.

“That student now works at SMART,” Apanius says. “It’s a great example of how everyone can work together for a lasting benefit to everyone involved.”

Nordson continues to market the results of the study and has performed other DOEs with customers to find new uses for its plasma technology. The company is using the analytic capabilities and inspection equipment of SMART Microsystems to conduct the studies, which are a critical part of the commercialization process.

In addition to these projects, Nordson has sponsored a series of biomedical sensor technology conferences at LCCC, helping to boost the industry’s profile across the region.

“We bought equipment from them, they’ve helped us with event sponsorships, and now we’re helping them find new applications for their products,” Apanius says. “We’re both open to new ways in which we can work together, and that’s a big factor in our combined success.”

Helping Nordson grow

As Nordson continues to leverage SMART to help develop new product lines, Selestak considers the relationship a critical factor in Nordson’s continued success and growth.

“SMART and LCCC are very valuable sources for developmental capabilities,” Selestak says. “When you are in the process of developing a device, LCCC not only has the facilities to support the tangible needs of development but also the industry expertise that is going to help shorten the time to market. It’s not only about developing the device, it’s about turning it into something that’s commercially viable, and doing it as soon as you can.”

Meanwhile, the partners always looking for new ways that their relationship and mutual goals can benefit each other, as well as the region.

“The more applications Nordson develops, the more they sell, so that’s an instance where the partnership has a direct correlation to their bottom line,” Apanius says. “Every time we’ve worked together, it’s been a win-win for SMART, the college and Nordson. We’re creating a high level of mutual value for all involved, and that’s always what you want to aim for.”